Eyes from the Abyss
by DarthChao
Summary: While Kirkwall is hardly a haven for mages, for a time it seems the blessing of companionship can make a person forget their despair - and yet, with each passing year, the fates of the less privileged become harder and harder to choke down. Anders/m!Hawke
1. Overtures

_[Author's note: While each chapter is part of a larger narrative, they're each somewhat stand-alone as well, and __they'll be narrated by various characters (mostly Hawke or Anders) in various persons and possibly tenses to best suit the needs of each individual piece.]_

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><p><strong>9:31 Dragon - Darktown<strong>

Though he might have been thoroughly underwhelmed by Darktown in the 'living-up-to-its name' category during his last (daytime) visit, the place really seemed poised to outdo itself when he visited again in the evening. Maker - _visiting_ Darktown. He was starting to really absorb what Carver meant that time he asked if Hawke _enjoyed_ feeling the looming threat of being mugged.

But at least if he _did_ get mugged, he now knew where to go to fix it.

Which, lovely as looming threats were, was really the only reason he was down here to begin with.

The clinic door was closed but not locked, so he pushed it open, half-expecting to be greeted suspiciously by a crowd of patched-up chokedamp-breathing refugees like those past two times he'd been there. There were no patients here tonight though; nor were any of the volunteers around. There was just Anders, standing over a table with a mortar and pestle in hand and a furrow of concentration on his brow. A cauldron of water sat poised over a flame on the other side of the room.

"I bet I know somebody who hasn't eaten today!" Hawke declared as a means of getting the healer's attention, lips twitching into a small grin despite himself.

Anders looked up from his work and momentarily stopped mushing herbs or whatever substance into tiny powdery pieces. "Hawke? What are you doing here?" Then, "And unless you're referring to somebody else, you lost that bet. I eat in the mornings."

"Oh. Well. Of course I was. I was referring to myself." Nevermind that knowing yourself doesn't exactly count and possibly isn't even proper use of the language, and he hoped that Anders didn't bother to point that bit out either.

But he doesn't, which Hawke is absolutely perfectly okay with. "That's a shame," he says instead, turning his head to the not-yet-boiling water and conjuring another spark of fire. "I realise you need a lot of coin to get in on that expedition, but you shouldn't starve yourself to do it. There's plenty of time to starve in the Deep Roads. Speaking of which, shouldn't you be out trying to _earn_ that coin?"

And then there's a terrible wormy little twist of doubt in his stomach that makes him awfully nervous, despite the half-smirk in Anders' tone, and what if Anders actually doesn't want him here and he's just intruding and being obnoxious and running his mouth the way he always does, and Anders isn't really amused by his stupid jokes at all because who ever actually was?

"I can go. If you have work to do," he blurts out, running a hand through his hair and studying the dreadfully bare shelves of potions because weren't shoddily-constructed home-made shelves just _fascinating_?

"No, no," Anders replied quickly with a shake of his head that sends a few strands of yellow hair fleeing to freedom from their precarious position just barely inside the band that held his ponytail. "I didn't mean it like that. It's just that, if you're trying to make money, there are better ways to do it than hanging around the free healer in Darktown."

The tension in Hawke's shoulders and limbs began to dissipate, which only made sense what with the vastly decreased likelihood of getting mugged inside Anders' clinic.

"I don't spend that much time here," he replied. A little too quickly. "And I'm getting close to the 50 sovereigns. Funny story - the Arishok never actually made a deal with that dwarf merchant who wanted the explosive powder, but he made him pay me anyway."

"I'm curious as to what you consider seeing somebody frequently, then," Anders murmured, one eyebrow raised and the corners of his lips pulled up into something like the halfblooded child of a smile and a smirk. Hawke was pretty sure the puddle of goo at his feet had once actually been comprised of his internal organs, before they'd melted not five seconds previously. "You were last here, what, three days ago? Not counting coming to get me to help you look for Feynriel. What did his mother say, out of curiosity?"

He shrugged, exaggeratedly. "She took it rather well, all things considered. I think she likes elves better than templars."

As she should." And there was the hardness in his voice again, which Hawke didn't exactly relish even as he saw his own feelings reflected back in it like his face in a clear pond. Perhaps best not to talk about the templars.

Hawke stared determinedly at his scuffed-up boots, which seemed to have acquired the wonderful new beginnings of a hole in the left toe area. "If you really are busy and I'm distracting you, I'll leave," he said. "And maybe not just show up unannounced so often. Or something. I just… I've never met another mage before. Who wasn't an immediate family member. And it's a lot bloody more interesting talking to you than sitting in Gamlen's house staring at the inside of a closet. I mean I know I've got nothing on the people around here, but Maker, that hovel was _not_ meant to sleep more than two people! Three at the absolute most."

Anders chuckled at this and Hawke managed to determinedly resist the urge to grin like a bloody maniac. Or idiot. Take your pick. Well, more like grin and _reveal_ his true inner idiotic maniacal nature. Or something similarly poetic.

Abandoning the mortar and pestle, he went over to gaze critically at the pot of water. "Still not boiling?" Hawke quipped.

Anders replied with a negative shake of the head. "No, it's not… You honestly aren't a bother. I rather like having company for these kinds of tasks. Spending too much time alone in my head gets… well, anyways." A soft reddish glow that made the air shimmer like a too-hot midsummer day suffused his hands, and bubbles began to float to the top of the cauldron. Small, slow ones first, then faster and bigger until the water churned. Hawke's family had never used magic for anything so mundane as heating or cooling water, even though Father undoubtedly had sufficient training and control and Bethany had quite the knack for fire and ice.

"You mentioned you had other mages in your family?" Anders said, and Hawke blinked at the intrusion. The _mind-reading _intrusion, which made Hawke half want to jump and shout about blood mages like a panicked templar recruit. But he didn't, because that would probably be bad taste even for him. Anders sounded curious, almost wondering. "Not your brother, no?"

Hawke gave a laugh that sounded a lot like something choking to death, and he might have even snorted at the end. "Carver? You're shitting me. If my brother were a mage, I think I'd die of laughter." A beat, as he considered the thought with a degree of seriousness. "That or I'd cry myself to sleep every night."

"Oh, surely he can't be that bad… Although, I rather see your point," Anders added dryly after a moment's contemplation.

"But no," Hawke murmured, hopping back onto the table where Anders worked as the other mage began adding all his crushed-up medicine-y plants to the roiling water. "I meant my father and sister." His feet swung back and forth and his fingers drummed idly against the wooden surface.

Anders turned halfway 'round, brushing his hands off so any renegade plant matter would make its way into the water for a short, scalding plant-death. He had that sort of look about him, questioning but not wanting to probe too deeply for potential fear of the answers the questions would dig up. Which he probably had plenty of experience with, digging up things best left alone, what with the Wardens and darkspawn and Deep Roads escapades he'd alluded to once or twice. "But they're not here with you. Were they…?"

And Hawke could tell what he was going to say before his lips even began to form the words, and he cut him off. "No, they weren't captured. Father was _far_ too clever for the templars to find him, and he taught us well." He tipped his head back and put a hand to his forehead for dramatic effect. "Alas, he perished of a dreadful blight not four years past. Not _the_ Blight, you see, just _a_ blight, full of all sorts of gross disease-y symptoms that I'm sure you could've cured the entire village and surrounding ten-mile radius of in a heartbeat if they didn't do silly things like lock you away in a tower." That didn't sound bitter. Certainly not. It was clever and amusing, and that was the exact opposite of bitter. "This was before we found out that the whole disease thing really didn't deserve the name, compared to the darkspawn."

"What about your sister?"

"Oh, you know, the usual," he answered, leaning back, voice all nonchalant as though it would help untie the knot forming in his stomach. "Crushed to pulp by an ogre when she tried to save us from it."

The sound of stirring quieted abruptly, like the fall of darkness in a room where somebody blew out the only lit candle. Hawke hazarded a glance in Anders' direction only to see exactly what he hadn't wanted to find, namely that Anders had abandoned his task entirely and was looking straight at him with the most distressed I'm-a-sad-puppy eyes ever, the ones he'd pulled out when he was telling Hawke about the _lover_ he'd _mercy-killed_ not days before (right after Hawke had _stuck his foot so deep in his mouth it was probably coming out the other end_, yeah real good job with that and perhaps he should not be thinking about sticking things in mouths any time soon for that matter). "I'm so sorry," he said, shock clear in his voice. "I wouldn't have asked…"

"Yeah, well." Hawke sat up again. "You don't have to be sorry. You didn't know." More silence. Damn those awkward silences. "It does seem to always be the nice ones who end up with horrible undeserved deaths, doesn't it? I mean she was always sweet and helpful and didn't get bitter or angry about being on the run and having to hide from everybody even if she did always wish she was normal, which of course made me just want to smash things because it _should_ be everybody else wishing they weren't rotten bastards rather than Bethany wishing she didn't have magic…"

Maker, he was ranting and rambling and if there was any justice in the world Anders would just smack him upside the head to get him to shut up - and then he nearly laughed aloud because _Ha. Justice._

He was a complete ass.

"Hawke?" He raised his head and blinked and then nearly jumped and scrambled off the table backwards in a rather painful and end-up-landing-on-your-head fashion, because Anders had somehow appeared _right in front of him_ and he hadn't even noticed. "Are you sure you're okay?"

He rubbed his suddenly itching eyes and sighed heavily. "Yes. No. I don't know. I'm… not very good with people. I just start babbling and words come out and I have no idea what I'm saying. It was always easier just to avoid everybody rather than having to monitor everything I said, so nobody would get any suspicions about apostates because I was an idiot and started shouting about mages deserving to be free and… well let's just say practise is a very good thing."

Anders put a hand on his knee in a way that Hawke guessed was supposed to be comforting and companionable-y except it rather wasn't because _holy sweet Maker Anders' _hand_ was on his _knee, and then he smiled and said "Well, you're perfectly welcome to shout about mages deserving their freedom around me. Perhaps not if we're in the Chantry or the Gallows again, but down here I think it's just fine. I'll probably join you if you don't mind."

"Of course not! The more the merrier. We can start a choir! And I think we should sing in the Chantry and the Gallows; it'll be _much_ more interesting than the Chant. That has to get so _dull_."

And then the other mage chuckled again and his insides felt sort of expand-y and floaty and this was the absolute _best_ feeling in the world, he decided. "Didn't you mention the other day that both times you've been to the Chantry here, it's involved killing people? I don't think the sisters like to let in people with that kind of a record, regardless of how good their singing voice is."

Hawke blinked in faux-innocence. "Did I ever say I had a good singing voice? I hope not; it's really rather dreadful. I distinctly remember Carver attempting to beat me over the head with a stick for singing while he was in earshot. But _you_, on the other hand… I'll bet you're good at a lot of things."

What was that he'd been thinking so recently about feet in mouths?

But Anders only smiled, a little cheekily if he looked close enough. "No, I can't say I've ever been that musically inclined. _Somebody_, and I'm not saying who, once enchanted the entire apprentice quarters in the Circle Tower to echo any sound produced at three times the volume, and then gave all the instruments in the place to the six and seven year olds. We weren't allowed music except as a very special privilege, after that."

"How did you find out you were a mage?" Hawke asked abruptly, because he'd been wanting to ask since he'd met Anders and had somehow always forgotten when he was actually around him and wasn't that just so annoying. Well, to be honest he wanted to ask Anders pretty much everything about his life because _finally_ here was another real live mage, in the flesh, just like him, and not beaten to death or anything morbid…

The laugh was gone and Hawke wondered if maybe it's a sad story and he shouldn't have asked. Probably. But Anders answered him anyway, so it was alright. He hoped. "Me? It's really the most clichéd mage story ever; I'm sure you've heard it quite a few times before," he said. Hawke shook his head and wondered if that's what it was like at the Tower, people all comparing their stories and deciding which ones followed some sort of script. Small child gets angry, turns unsuspecting companion into a newt, villagers are alarmed, templars are called in and help the companion get better and then march the poor child off to the Circle. Or something.

"I accidentally set fire to my family's barn," Anders continues. "I was twelve rather than five or six, and I was playing with lightning rather than fire, but otherwise it's pretty much just like what you'd imagine when you think 'mage origin story'. My father was angry and thought my magic was a curse from the Maker, but my mother cried when the templars took me."

His voice was quiet and distressed, but carried nowhere near the raw emotion it had but a couple days ago when he mentioned the same subject. _They come to your little rat-spit village_...Despite how Hawke normally got, he couldn't quite bring himself to make another tasteless joke at this. Even if Anders didn't seem quite so broken up as he had before, the topic seemed to deserve a degree of seriousness. Or maybe he was just tired of always acting like it didn't bother him, and it was nice to give the moment some honesty.

In another corner of his mind, it's also that he's trying to imagine that scene with his own family, and it fits like a piece of clothing that pinches tight in some places and flops around with far too much loose fabric in others. Father had always meant security and safety and responsibility and hot afternoons spent behind the house making objects hurtle through the air while Beth conjured ice crystals in the back of their shirts to keep them cool.

And hiding, and denial. Angry admonishments that _no matter what somebody's done to or said about mages, you are _not _to go screaming at them and pelting them with their own family's eggs,_ which he'd thought was insult added to his (numerous) injuries that the group of older boys in question had so kindly provided him with, all on top of a mountain of unfairness. _You saw what they did to that girl_, he'd shouted tearfully, trying and failing to sit up properly due to his broken ribs, which Father wouldn't heal for him because then people would be suspicious and they'd have to move again. _You _heard _them admit that they raped her and killed her, and they talked like she was a thing and everybody let them go because they said they panicked about her 'lying' to them_ -

Father had held him close and let him sob into his tunic, repeating a whispered _it's not fair_ and _they deserve to be dead_ over and over like a litany. _I know, son_, he'd replied, every time. Hawke was twelve. They moved shortly afterward anyway. Nobody wanted to live in that village after that.

"Hawke?" Anders' voice now, not Father's, and he's sitting on a rickety table in Darktown, not in his bed. And he's not sore all over and barely able to move. Also twenty-three, rather than twelve. Always good, that. "You looked… troubled. And far away. Do you want to talk?"

"And here I thought I rarely did anything but," he said, halfhearted. But the thought stuck or burrowed in or whatever metaphor he wanted to use. Was that something he could do? Talk with Anders? He never talked with anybody.

But what else did he come down here to do, if not talk with him? He was somebody safe. It felt weird in his mouth when he'd formed the consonants and vowels, but it was true. Somebody safe, who knew him and understood him _even though you've known each other for all of eight days counting today; what are you, crazy?_

… Yes.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, Anders seemed to have abandoned his potion-making task, or perhaps finished it, which struck him as more likely given how the man was stacking flasks and vials on that one rickety shelf he'd inspected. It seemed like ages ago.

"Do you want to go out and find some place that sells food?" he asked him, looking over his shoulder expectantly as he placed the last flask. "Since it's that time of day and, well… I'd offer you something, but I don't actually own anything I could let you eat in good conscience."

"Yet you eat it yourself?" Hawke replied, raising an eyebrow. Changing topics. Changing topics was good. "I'm thinking maybe you should focus more on your own well-being than mine if that's the case. So yes, going somewhere else to eat sounds like a wonderful idea. Have anywhere in mind?"

Now it was Anders' turn to raise an eyebrow. "You can't think I go out to eat regularly. I was actually hoping you might have a suggestion. "

"Nope, fresh out, unless you want to go to the Hanged Man. I suppose we could… wander aimlessly, until we see something that looks decent and not about to cost us the entirety of my Deep Roads savings?"

"Wandering aimlessly it is then!"


	2. Carver

**9:31 Dragon - Lowtown**

When Varric returned to the Hanged Man, time nearing midnight and Bianca thankfully unsullied by the blood of any hapless thugs who might have thought it a good idea to rob a solitary well-dressed dwarf, he was rather inordinately pleased. Even though she was but a few years removed from Orzammar and some of the Carta's shadier dealings, Rensil Cazda made for pleasant, honest company and an even better resource for a man looking to sell priceless ancient artifacts. From the way she told it, finally making the sane choice and heading to the surface had been quite the ordeal, but Varric had a suspicion it hadn't taken her long to establish herself as a reputable fence to clientele as diverse as starry-eyed scholars and buyers of questionable virtue interested in rare treasures, and even some of the puffed-up dwarves who worked in the Shaperate, though if he had to guess he'd say that last one involved a fabricated identity or two. Either way, he could trust that he'd be seeing some of his hard-earned expedition coin soon, and it had barely been a day since they'd gotten back. A success like that made it worth the late hour of his homecoming.

Considering it had just been this morning when he'd made it back to the city, however, he was rather less than prepared for the sight that greeted him when he entered the tavern.

"Hawke?" he said, incredulous. The human was alone, hunched over a tiny corner table and practically marinating in the shadows cast between lanterns, hand fixed to a glass that had presumably once been filled with one of Corff's whiskeys. As it was now, there was only a swallow or two remaining on in the bottom. Varric stepped over to him, dousing the human's face in shadow, and Hawke looked up, staring for a few moments in a way that Varric found a little too reminiscent of somebody trying to resolve a double image. "What are you doing here by yourself?" he asked, racking his brains for some reason Hawke would be skulking at a table in the Hanged Man this late on the night of his triumphant treasure-laden return to Kirkwall. "Shouldn't you be at home or out somewhere celebrating with your family?"

Hawke only scowled and drained his drink before slamming his glass against the table. "What family?" he asked, voice bitter and slightly slurred. "Mother's busy weeping n' 'm not spending any more time with Gamlen."

Varric raised an eyebrow_. That_ didn't seem right at all."And what about your brother? What's little Hawke so busy with that he can't have a night off to celebrate us all getting rich?"

"Learning how t' abuse people like me with that shiny new armor of his, 'm sure. How 'bout you get me another drink 'stead of poking 'round my business?"

"Hawke, _what_ in the name of Andraste are you going on about?" Varric asked, pulling a chair out from beneath the table and sitting opposite him. "And I think you've had quite enough already."

"I dunno, d'you think I'll 've forgotten today when I wake up in the morning yet?" Hawke replied. "'Cause if there's one memory I don't need, 's Carver saying he's joined the bloody templars."

Varric blinked a couple times, trying to make sure he'd actually heard what he thought he'd heard. The _templars_? Bloody flames. Well, considering that, he could hardly blame the human for his present state… though that didn't make it any better for him. "What on earth possessed him to do that?"

"Sod 'f I know," Hawke mumbled. "Threw a hissy fit 'bout me easing Mother's mind not letting him come with us… idiot probably woulda caught the damn Blight or gotten crushed by rocks and then she woulda blamed that on me too, but no, 's all about how he's stuck in my shadow 'n decides he's gonna go live up his name or some rubbish. Never shoulda given him those sodding letters…" He trailed off pensively, and attempted to take another drink before realising his glass was empty. "I should go 'n… warn Anders there might be visitors, 'r somethin'…" he muttered, and stood. Varric eyed the way he leaned against the table with a knowing eye.

"Hawke, right now, I don't think you're in the best position to go wandering around the Undercity at night."

"'m fine," he said sullenly. "Anyone tries 'ttack me, I'll set 'm on fire."

_Set them on fire_. Honestly, Varric shouldn't have been surprised, but he was anyway. He'd have to work on that. "That might not be the best idea if you're trying to keep the templars _away_ from Blondie, you realise," he said.

"Yeah, need to warn Anders 'bout the templars."

It took some amount of effort for Varric not to put a hand to his forehead and sigh. Just when he'd been looking forward to a quiet night in his suite. _How_ did he manage to get himself involved in this sort of thing, again?

"Okay, if you really want to, I'll take to you go see Blondie. Maker knows you'll need to get to his clinic for more than just warnings about templars if I don't escort you…" he muttered. Hawke nearly tripped over his own feet getting up from the table, but that only just proved his point.

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><p>Summers in Kirkwall were unbearably hot, Anders was coming to learn, and the fall of night did little to dissuade the sticky humid air from hanging about him like an unwanted blanket. It had something to do with their proximity to the ocean, he suspected; the little village in the Bannorn where he'd spent his early years had been all clear blue skies and crisp heat in the summer, the stone walls of Kinloch Hold had been enchanted so as to keep even such a mundane thing as weather away from their prisoners, and while he hadn't spent enough time in Amaranthine to experience its summers, the spring there had shown enough hints of what it would be like that Anders felt fairly confident in his assessment.<p>

As much as he complained about never being able to feel a sharp gust of wind or the drip of rain onto his head and down the back of his neck once his hair grew sodden when he lived in the Circle, though, he would have relished the presence of those enchanted walls around his clinic if they came by themselves to relieve him of the heat. Such magic was centuries old and sadly beyond his talents though, so he had to make do with stripping down to his undertunic and shorts and condensing the moisture in the air to coat his walls with a thin layer of already-weeping ice crystals. His hair was still damp and stringy about his face, but there was little and less he could do about that now, given the awkward length he'd saddled himself with from that impromptu haircut. _Shorten your hair and wear it down; tear up those robes and make new clothes with them, they're too ostentatious and just as bad as that _I'm a mage_ sign, and there's a hole torn in the chest anyway. And get rid of that damned earring. Looking like yourself will only get you caught again, and it's not a game anymore. You've made sure of that_.

He was hardly expecting a knock on his door at this hour, given how most of the residents of Darktown had curled up in whatever patch of slightly-less-mucky-floor they could find in hopes of passing the fetid night in unconsciousness, not to mention the doused state of his lantern. And his relative lack of presentability, considering.

But the knock came, nonetheless, once and then again and then followed by an awkward sort of _thump_ that sounded like it might've come from someone cracking their head on his door. _Who could it be _this _time_? he wondered, only slightly irritated. The place was substantially less of a wreck than he'd cringingly expected when he opened the doors to stale unmoving air earlier in the morning; apparently the temporary removal of the free healer from Kirkwall's Undercity had persuaded people to stop getting sick and injured with quite the same frequency as before. But _now_? Perhaps somebody nearly passed out from heatstroke, he could understand, but some poor street thug deciding it was a good time to get in a fight rather than sit still and drape a wet cloth over his forehead would remain thoroughly incomprehensible to him.

"Open up, Blondie!" came a familiar voice from the door, accompanied by another round of raps against the wood, and Anders hurriedly grabbed the nearest pair of trousers, nevermind that they were probably disgusting and sweat-stained and covered in Maker-knows-what-else from the Deep Roads since he hadn't gotten around to doing wash since he'd gotten back, accidentally pulling them up as far as his bare calves before realising they were backwards and having to step out of them and turn them round.

When he finally made his way over to open the door, he was greeted to the sight of not only Varric, but also Varric holding tight to Hawke's arm, seemingly to keep the other man from stumbling and falling onto Anders' floor. From a second's glimpse, he seemed to have been leaning against the wooden paneling. Even in the dim lighting, Anders could see lines around his eyes that hadn't been there when they'd parted ways this morning, and when he stepped closer, half-stumbling and nearly smashing his nose into Anders' shoulder save for Anders catching him, he was overwhelmed by the stench of cheap liquor.

"Varric, what on earth…?" Anders stuttered out, turning to look questioningly at the dwarf as he lifted a rather limp and clingy Hawke away from his person and struggled to maneuver him into sitting atop the nearest wooden table. "Just because I have magic doesn't mean I can instantly make someone sober."

The dwarf edged the door shut and rubbed his forehead. "Look, this wasn't exactly my idea. I found Hawke when I came back to the Hanged Man after a meeting with one of my contacts. He insisted on coming down here, and I couldn't very well let him wander around the Undercity by himself."

Hawke swayed a little on the table and made a grab for Anders' wrist, pulling him closer. His eyes shined golden in the soft lantern light, fixed and insistent. "Had t' warn you 'bout th' _templars_," he said, words mumbled yet somehow emphatic.

A bolt of fear lanced through him, oft ignored but always readied in the pit of his stomach. Had someone ratted him out in his weeks of absence? If that were the case, it seemed more logical for an ambush to be waiting when he got back to the clinic, but perhaps they were only waiting to lull him into a false sense of security? You could never be certain. Templars were devious.

"Is this something you've heard, Varric?"he asked, unable to keep the note of worry from his voice. He slipped his arm free from Hawke's grasp and began pacing tight ovals in the space in front of them.

Varric shook his head and sighed. "Actually, no. This is all Hawke's idea. From what I could get out of him, it seems Junior got a bit offended at being left home from the expedition, and thought it'd be a good idea to get back at his brother by joining the Order."

Anders stopped his pacing and stared. "Are you kidding me?" he hissed, brows knitting together and the fear in him quickly replaced by anger. "Carver, a _templar_… How could he even _do_ that? How could he do that to _you_?" His last words were savage, and he whirled around to face Hawke. No wonder the other mage was so drunk he could barely stand. Anders knew what such a betrayal felt like, even if his own had been over half his life ago. A punch to the chest that knocked all the air from your lungs; a clawed hand ripping open your belly and tearing out all your insides. And how much worse, when you'd grown up together, weathered loss and death and starting a new life over how many times already? He felt sick at heart for the man before him, head spinning and boiling with rage. Had mages offended the Maker so much that He couldn't even let Hawke - kind, selfless, clever, _adorable_ Tam Hawke - lead his life without constantly being dogged by those sadistic, self-righteous fools?

"Easy there Blondie. I have it on good authority that your eyes are prettier when they're brown." Varric patted his arm amiably, and Anders' gaze flicked to the dwarf, then further down to his bare feet and the floor.

"Sorry," he murmured hoarsely. That was not good. That was very extremely not good, and worse, he wasn't sure what he could do about it. It was bad enough that spending time with Hawke distracted him from his healing, or the manifesto he'd begun writing recently, or doing more investigation into this mage underground he'd heard whispers of, but to think that his coming to harm might provoke Justice into emerging… And this was even with Anders holding him at arms-length. _Ha, 'arms-length'_, another part of his mind chided. _If that's arms-length, I'd like to see what you consider being close_. It wasn't like they had known each other all that long, though adventuring through pits full of darkspawn and giant spiders and ancient lyrium-eating dwarven constructs did tend to foster a deeper bond between those who shared such an experience than that of those who merely went about their day-to-day lives together.

Time to change the subject. "Do you think Carver would tell the Knight-Commander about us?" Anders himself, or even Carver's own brother… the Dalish girl, Merrill. And then Anders mentally kicked himself, because what a lovely topic to switch to. Certainly less likely to invite in his angry blue self.

Varric shrugged. "I don't think we can know for certain, not right now at least. I'll talk to some friends who have sources in the Gallows. I _think_ Hawke said something about Junior promising not to turn him in, but you'll understand it's a little difficult to get good information out of him. Me, I don't think he would, but then again I also wouldn't exactly say we've had the best luck lately in terms of brothers being trustworthy."

Anders let out a sigh and leaned against Hawke's table, brows tight. "No, I wouldn't say we have." Hawke had apparently decided that was a good moment to fall against Anders' side and bury his face in his shoulder. Anders could feel his scruffy beginnings of a proper beard through the thin fabric of his tunic. With some regrets that he dutifully pushed to the back of his mind, and thankfully before Hawke managed to test his resolve any further by clinging to him, he removed the other mage and propped him back up far enough away that any additional flopping over wouldn't result in more of the same.

"So what do you suggest doing then, about this hypothetical templar horde that may or may not descend upon us?"

Varric looked up at him and scratched his chin. "Hmm," he said. "Well, I could probably lean on a few people I know to get some scouts to watch this place for you, alert you to any forces of law and order that come snooping around. You probably shouldn't stay here overnight though, not until we've got better information."

A brief scowl crossed Anders' face. "Great. Just what I needed: to actually _be_ homeless as well as look like it."

That got a chuckle from the dwarf, followed by an echo from Hawke, who at Anders' glance seemed more amused by the fact that someone was laughing than by the reason for said laughter. "Hey, I never said wearing feathers was the fashionable thing to do, did I? And there's nothing wrong with staying over at a friends' place for a few days, is there? Think of it as a well-deserved vacation."

"I should be getting back to work with how long I've been gone, not going on holiday," Anders sighed. "But I see your point. Unless some inkeep wants to accept old dwarven jewelry as payment, though, I don't have any money, so I'm hoping that was an offer to put me up the Hanged Man."

Varric spread his hands outward. "What do you think I am, a charity case?" He snickered. "Of course it was. Better bring him, too - " he jerked a thumb in Hawke's direction - "because I don't fancy taking him home to his mother in that state."

Anders thought on what little he'd seen of Leandra Amell, and decided he had to agree with that statement. He'd only met her twice, once just before they left for the Deep Roads and once shortly prior, when Hawke had shown up in his clinic to tell him his mother had been horrified by how little he ate and had insisted he come visit for supper. Anders had raised an eyebrow at that, questioning why somebody he'd never met knew about his living conditions, but he'd visited nonetheless. The slum that Hawke's family lived in was better than Darktown, at least, but the houses were still windowless caves dug into crumbling stone, and the air was still clogged with haze and smog despite the distance from most of the foundries. Regardless, Leandra had tried to make the place inviting, and Anders couldn't have faulted her cooking even if he hadn't been living on stale and battered leavings from Lirene's charity and merchants' days-old selections. She was unfailingly polite, (somehow even while deflecting her two sons' sniping at each other), asking about his work with the refugees and telling him how nice it was that Hawke was finally making friends. Amidst it all, Hawke had given him an awkward sort of grin, too, and made several jokes at the expense of his living conditions and his uncle over the course of the evening, which all in all was more charming than it had any right to be. But the point was not, as it so often mutated into, that Hawke evoked all sorts of feelings in him that he'd rather not have to deal with, but rather that Leandra clearly cared deeply for her family. The increasingly-tattered remnants, at least. It would do Leandra no favours to let her see her son like this, particularly with it the result of her other son's actions.

"We should get going," Anders murmured. He glanced over at Hawke, who seemed to be staring vacantly at the table and mumbling uncomplimentary things about his brother, seasoning with occasional profanity. "I should get some of my things. I'll only be a moment."

He slid shut the plane of wood he'd installed to separate his… bedroom seemed too promising a word… from the rest of the clinic and began packing supplies into a sack: the beginning pages of his manifesto and his writing materials, some spare changes of clothes, the few leather-bound tomes that would scream _mage_ to anyone who spared a cursory look. Socks and boots were pulled over his feet and laced up; his coat tossed over his shoulders but not buckled. Unwise as it would be to wander shoeless through Darktown, he would concede the discomfort to his feet, but he found his concern for being halfway decent quailed beneath the bullying heat when it came to his coat. He emerged from the back room then, and did a round of the clinic, pulling his most common remedies from the shelves for his pack so he could do at least some work while in his temporary exile, along with one of the last flasks of a hangover remedy potion, and finally took his staff.

"Ready?" Varric asked, and Anders nodded his assent. "Sorry to put this all on you so suddenly, you know, but - "

"Better paranoid than Tranquil," he finished grimly.

Hawke slid down from the table at that, and Anders instinctively reached out a hand to steady him. He could have sworn Varric was giving him a Look, though of course the dwarf would deny everything if he ever mentioned it. Better just to keep all his limbs in his own bubble of personal space and… distinctly not let Hawke encroach upon it for the purpose of petting his shoulders. Maker, he would not be able to deal with the man at _all_ if this was how he behaved while intoxicated.

"I'll kill anyone who tries t' make you Tranquil," he stated, face scrunched up in what could have been concentration, or melancholy, or a mix of the two and more. His fingers were still entwined in the feathers of Anders' coat, and Anders wasn't sure whether to blame that or the other man's declaration for the jumpy, fluttery feeling in his stomach. Probably both, with a side of templar-related anxiety. He almost wished that _side_ were the main dish, so to speak, because at least it was familiar - unpleasant, but something that had slipped into the recesses of his mind in a process of nearly two decades, and companions that old had a way of feeling enticing even if they dripped with poison.

"All right, you two lovebirds. Let's go get that room from Corff before there's no more night left to use it for." Anders could have sworn he blushed crimson at Varric's comment, but at least the lighting, or lack thereof, would have made it more difficult to see. He hoped.

He dislodged Hawke from his shoulders with a little noise of disappointment from the other mage that made Anders want to ruefully shake his head, and they set off. An attempted mugging barely a few turns through the winding tunnels managed to undo that work with ease, though; Anders trapped the offending slum-dweller in an invisible prison before he could do any damage, but afterward Varric pointed out with impeccable logic that Bianca would hold off unsavoury characters just as easily as magic and with substantially less templar-beckoning, and so Anders was left supporting Hawke as he stumbled along. Anders had started off just grasping his arm, but soon enough Hawke had leaned against him, _again_, slid an arm around Anders' middle and left him to awkwardly hold his shoulder and sigh. Infuriating tease. But that probably wasn't fair; the man was drunk and preoccupied and Anders had half a suspicion he'd be too oblivious to notice what he was doing even if he were sober. His words from after the debacle at the Chantry spring to mind: _So that explains your whole… sexy… tortured… look_. He didn't know how the man could make such shameless flirting sound like a distracted commentary on the weather, but Maker, Hawke could do it anyway, sense be damned.

The rest of their walk passed without incident, as did the room rental. It was nice to acquire an actual bed, for once, even with… other things. Hawke had curled up on his own mattress almost as soon as he was led to it, and from across the close space, he looked almost peaceful in his sleep. Anders wondered if the other mage's time in the Fade had often been intruded upon by spirits or demons - neither of them had spoken of such matters before, but it was common enough, as mages began to grow into their power. Not so common, he suspected, as _certain_ people liked to say; demons, he'd observed, seemed to like the convenient, the weak, the despairing, and the particularly unfulfilled, but otherwise were content enough to leave you alone. They were clever bastards for the most part, save for the occasional snuffed candle that would attempt to deal with a human and end up stuck inside a cat. Either way, if Hawke's dreams were interrupted by any creatures of the Fade, the other man didn't show it.

Anders sighed as he sank down onto his own rag-stuffed mattress, glad for at least the temporary comfort. Strange it should come on the heels of such tumultuous news, though looking back it seemed most misfortunes carried a spark of hope, most sweet fruits a bitter seed. The opportunity to learn and master his powers in the Circle; the burdens of a Warden and the whims of the new Commander in freedom. All that was left was for Hawke to find some good in his loss, his _betrayal_. But that was an endeavour for the morning, for clearer heads and cleaner clothes. He was tired. Like always since Justice, his sleep came dreamlessly.


	3. Erase

**9:32 Dragon - Darktown**

He was silent when he entered the clinic. Just the pushing open of the door that I caught in the corner of my eye and looked up from my work for, expecting another patient, and then Hawke, moving to lean against the wall and not saying a word. There was something wrong about that - didn't he always come over and bother me, whether I was in the midst of healing an injury or an illness or not? - but I couldn't interrupt what I was doing to speak with him.

He waited in silence, too, a dark look on his face and something in his figure that was more tense than usual. The shoulders and arms, perhaps. At one point it seemed he'd taken a jar of a salve from my shelves to toss back and forth between his hands, though soon enough he put it back. Perhaps he'd thought better of letting it accidentally slip from his grasp and shatter on the floor below. After that, he took up wringing his hands instead. Not that I was watching, not at all; my attention was fully focused on cleansing as much of the foundry-smog poison from the lungs of the woman on my table as was possible. Or so I told myself. Once the first of them had discovered my clinic, it was barely days before nearly the whole of the workforce of the foundry district - and half the population of the neighboring hexes - had appeared at my doorstep. I did what I could and sent them on their way, at least until the next week or month. Maker, but I always had to step in and try to delay the inevitable, didn't I? I missed the days when I could look a problem straight in the face and walk away because it was so entrenched that nothing could be done to change it – if ignorance was bliss, refusing responsibility had to at least be its runner-up. But neither made you a better person; neither made any society a better place to live. Justice had gone and smashed my old attitude into a million pieces, and I could almost say I was the better for it.

Hawke barely looked at me when I finished my work and went over to him. "So, what crisis have you gotten yourself involved in now?" I asked him with a smile. "Or did you just miss the smell of chokedamp everywhere?"

If anything, his expression became a fully-fledged scowl. "I just couldn't stand another minute in that damned house," he muttered.

"I thought you'd moved out of that shack of Gamlen's," I teased.

"Well isn't that just the problem," he bit back. "Yes, we live in a mansion now. The old _Amell_ estate. Maker's breath, if one more person claps me on the back and calls me the new scion of the Amell family, I'm going to light them on fire."

I frowned at this. "What's this about?" I asked. "I know you're not a fan of the nobility, but…"

"It's like somebody's been following after me and trying to wipe up all the footprints I've left on the floor. Trying to get the stains out of a coat that I put there on purpose."

I knew what that was like. It was a game, in the Circle; spilling potion ingredients and conjuring slicks of grease along stretches of floor the templars had just cleaned; rearranging stacks of books and papers that some senior enchanter wanted ordered just so. Little rebellions that made you feel the victor for a few hours, perhaps even a day, and wouldn't get you in _too_ great a trouble once somebody cottoned on. Unless you were like me, and took it past the point where you were an amusing, reckless young scamp all the way into immature-troublemaker-who-should-have-stopped-this-behavior-once-he-passed-his-Harrowing territory. But even so, the satisfaction never lasted, because someone who played by the rules would always come to put it right like you hadn't even been there.

"I never wanted to come here," Hawke confessed. "Maker knows it's not like I actually had a _home_ in Ferelden, but why _Kirkwall_? Beth and I never wanted… I said we should leave and try somewhere else, when the guard wasn't letting any of the refugees into the city, but no, we had _family_, and an _estate_, and we were supposed to be _nobility_… 'We're not putting Mother through that again,' Carver said, because aren't they the ones who always matter. Of course they're the ones who've survived, why shouldn't they be? The Maker loves them more, everybody says. But no, I went and found the will, and I let Carver stay in case something happened to us, and I brought back coin enough to get her the damned mansion, but it's still not good enough. She's just going to settle back into her old life with her noble friends and we can all be _Amells_ again, and leave Father and Bethany behind in the dust. I heard her and some of those _friends_ talking, and do you know what they said? They said it was so nice to have the Amell family back in Kirkwall again, to leave behind 'all that nasty business with Revka, and everything else'. That _nasty business_ was a person! A little _girl_, not… I don't even know, some smuggling deal! And Mother just said nothing, even with me in the room. As if I wasn't exactly the same."

I touched his arm lightly, hoping to offer some comfort. I wanted to take the entirety of him in my arms and wipe all his pain away the way I would for a patient, but the latter was impossible and the former… I could not trust myself with that. It would feel too much like taking advantage. "I'm sorry," was all I said.

He let out a bitter laugh. "I shouldn't be whining about this to you," he said. "Like you don't have bigger problems. More important things to deal with. I'm one of the lucky ones. What does it matter if I feel -"

"Erased," I completed softly. "Silenced."

Hawke stilled, and there was a look in his eye, something I couldn't quite place. Perhaps it was the feeling of having somebody else who could understand, without you needing to explain. For once.

"It does matter," I told him. "When you don't exist, it's that much easier to hurt you. And for every person who falls to templar blades and angry villagers, there's another who falls to his own despair, of being told his existence is a sin and having nobody around to listen when he cries. And if that weren't the case, even if it weren't a matter of life and death, we shouldn't have to live in a world where anybody is made to feel that way."

I felt his knuckles brush the back of my hand, then the heat of his palm pressed against my own. He took my hand, threaded his fingers through mine till they were intertwined, fitting perfectly as though there was no other place they belonged. His hands were shorter than mine, _slender_ rather than long and bony from my chronic case of not eating as often as I should, though both our pairs were worn and staff-callused.

"You're brilliant," he whispered, voice brittle and cracked. "You help make things better for mages, and you've given up everything for it, and I sit in a mansion and mouth off to templars and let children turn themselves over to the care of people like Karras…"

I bit my lip, wanting to say something, but in the end forced myself to simply give his hand a reassuring squeeze. _There are jobs I could bring you in on_, I wanted to say, he wanted to hear; a person like Hawke would be invaluable to the Underground, but the number of people who'd come to know his face since we came back from the Deep Roads… it was just too risky.

"You can't just force someone to live outside the Circle," I told him instead. "If he didn't want it, he'd never be able to survive on the run. " The words had come so grudgingly when he'd said them: _The templar Thrask is outside… Surrender to him…_ And then after we returned, their chance meeting in the Gallows Courtyard, anguished whispers and that eventual hesitant confession that left Hawke's expression dark as the stormy waters beneath the boat back to the city. I doubted even my words were a comfort for that.

He didn't even try to argue with me, just clenched my hand tighter and pressed it close against his chest, glassy eyes and crumpled expression turned down to the gulf of negative space between us.

I knew what he wanted. Maker, I'd known for a year, practically since the very day we'd met. As if I wanted it any less. And this, this brush of fingers, this press of palms more enticing and intimate than all the suggestive comments and smirking movements of lips and eyebrows we'd exchanged. This was the lifeline you clung to when you were tossed overboard on a ship, holding tight to keep from drowning as someone else pulled you in. But I was no ship, no safe harbour for him. More like a whirlpool that would grab hold and trap him underwater no matter how he struggled to get away, drag him further beneath the waves and watch him drown.

_Don't you want someone to drown with you_?

Maker help me but I did. There were times I missed my old selfishness, but even with Justice it seemed not all of it had gone. I wouldn't even be asking for anything, merely saying _yes_ to a question posed to me, over and over in glances and touches and stolen moments that let the world stand still.

But the fact that it would be my answer rather than my question did not make it any more right, any more _just_. I could see better than most that inaction is a deed in itself, that allowing something others want rather than interposing yourself and saying _enough_ holds you just as culpable. Allowing the current to carry you over a cliff when there's a sturdy branch to cling to right beside your hand isn't any less a suicide than leaping from the top of a tower. And so I could not, _would_ not make myself a hypocrite like that. I could hold him and comfort him as best as I could, though undoubtedly that _best_ was lacking, and remain by his side as a friend; it was the least way I could repay him for everything he didn't need to do for me. But I could not love him.

Gently, slowly, I slid my fingers from his and stepped back. I couldn't bring myself to look at him from anywhere but the corner of my eye. How often had I been in the position he was in now? Far too many times. I remembered first seeing the city, stepping off that wretched boat with a swarm of filthy poverty-stricken refugees who I could do little and less for without revealing myself for a mage. They spit us out right into the Gallows and I shook like a leaf at the sight of each face-swallowing helm, half lost in my own sickened mind as I drank in the surroundings. Cold stone towering above, slits for windows across the carved edifice like a thousand eyes all watching. Watching _me_. A slave prison, it used to be, I heard someone saying, and the rage beat at my skull like a drum. _Used to be. Used to be_. Wrong tense. And here I'd come – what? To help these people? To help _Karl_… even that seemed too big, too impossible a task. I was a single man who'd been caught as many times as I'd ran, and I could tear a man apart with my bare hands and revel in it because it had all gone _so_, _so_ wrong.

A man had come up to me then, and asked if I was okay, and I'd stared blankly up at him for several moments before I realized I'd sank down into a hunched position against a wall, eyes shut tight and fists clenched in my hair. Like some tormented madman. I mumbled something in reply and picked myself up and made sure to stare resolutely at the cobblestones beneath my feet for the rest of my stay in that wretched place. Even that did little to quell the hate and despair and dread, because I couldn't ignore any more. Couldn't push the knowledge of what was just beyond myself into a little locked box in the back of my memories, like before. Eventually, worried I might transform again into that… creature… the next time somebody disturbed me, I dug out the blood-filled pendant with the etched griffon the Commander had given me. The guards must have been drunk or bored or just sick to death of _refugees, everywhere_, because I managed to pass through the line of guardsmen as a stranded Warden who needed to re-provision himself at Kirkwall before setting off for the nearest outpost. I'd chopped my hair and stained it a temporary mud-brown and hopefully didn't look anything like myself, if the other Wardens came calling. Maker, I'd hoped not. But it was that or stay in the Gallows going mad, and I knew which chance was the better to take.

I probably had that choice to thank for Hawke, too, if I really considered it. One of the refugees must have overheard and spread it about, because I certainly hadn't been discussing the Wardens with my patients, and yet he turned up anyway, knowing what I'd been. Or a part of it, at least.

He seemed to come back to the present when our hands parted, pulling me along too. "Sorry," he murmured, dropping the offending limb back to his side with an awkward speed that made it look as though I'd shocked him.

"I didn't mind," I replied then, before my mind had apparently caught up with my mouth. It was true, he had no reason to be sorry, but there was a line between being supportive and leading someone on. A thin, blurry one that we had the unfortunate tendency to play jump-rope with when we noticed it approaching at all. "It's not a bother. I don't like seeing you upset." The rope flew over my head, and I jumped.

Hawke rubbed the back of his neck and looked away. "Yes, well, uh… I really… shouldn't have. Just gotten all grabby and hey! You're all _there_ for grabbing on to and… that really came out wrong and I think I'll just stop talking." He tried to give me a smile, as if to say, _see, all better now_, but it looked more like a grimace and it never reached his eyes. "Y'know, I should go," he said, backing up in the direction of the door, hands stuffed into the pockets of his trousers. "You've got more stuff to do I'm sure, and Aveline said I should come see her about a job soon and that was a couple days ago so I should really go do that. Uh, now."

He practically fled the place with barely a good bye, and I let him go. It was fear, truly. Fear and the knowledge that, even though he was a mage and thus part of my cause, I could not serve my true purpose giving so much of my energy to him. Bad enough that he'd begun to dog the hours I tried to sleep, like the deranged mutterings of the darkspawn had when I still dreamed; the time I was awake, I should devote to patients, to my writing, to the tasks I could do for the Underground, not to these self-indulgent interactions that only fueled my developing… _obsession_. And weren't his words right? That I had bigger problems, more important things to deal with? What was one man next to an entire Gallows of his unlucky counterparts; an entire Thedas?

Everything. Nothing. I wanted him with everything a man could want, heart and soul and body. But I was more than just a man. I had to be.

* * *

><p>Even for an elf, my charge looked too skinny. Disheveled, malnourished, and sunken-eyed, she had the hunched, defensive posture of one who'd spent too many nights clutching at some rusty scrounged knife to keep at bay the sort who'd steal whatever crust of bread she'd found for the day's meal, or worse. She'd heard about our <em>services<em> from a flyer hung up at the shelter, Annai had told me the last time I'd seen her. We got a decent number of clients from Annai's place, between those who needed the food and beds she provided and those who heard about her Underground connections from the former. I wasn't all that surprised about this one, really. From what I'd seen, there were two sorts in the Alienage: the ones like the Commander who despised the Chantry and literally fought tooth-and-nail to keep the templars away from their friends, and the ones who wanted to keep their heads down and get anyone with plate mail and authority out of their neighborhood as fast as possible. This girl wasn't one of the lucky ones. I didn't know how long she'd been on the street, or whether she had any idea of where she'd go after Kirkwall, or even what her name was. When I'd asked, she'd just given me a silent, distrusting glare from beneath the tangled, matted curtain of dark hair that fell about her face, and I knew better than to press the matter.

She followed me with similar silence through the smugglers' tunnels, all the way until they spilled out to jagged rock and slopes of pale sand and the crash of waves below us. I leaned against my staff and scanned the horizon, the elven girl standing off to the side behind me like a ghost. If she'd brought any possessions with her, they had to be strapped to her person or otherwise concealed beneath her clothes, a too-big tunic and a stained, inexpertly patched skirt.

It wasn't long before the next leg arrived, the pair of them rounding the jut of stone wearing wary looks that relaxed a touch when they took in the sight of us. They were both humans, the man with a wicked-looking blade strapped to his back, and the woman with a dagger at her hip and carved quarterstaff in her hand. I hadn't seen these two before, but then I'd only escorted runners a few times so far, so it wasn't too surprising. "No phylactery, I trust?" the woman asked. She had a northern accent to match her brown skin, putting her origins near to Starkhaven, best I could guess. I took a closer look, racking my brain to see if she was at all familiar, but I couldn't place her at all. She had too much of a look that said sneaking and hiding was deeper than habit for her to be a recent Circle escapee, in any case.

"Never had one to begin with," I replied, when my charge remained, as ever, silent.

The woman nodded. "Good." She reached out a beckoning hand to the elven girl, who shuffled over toward them. "Sorry we can't stay and chat, but the sooner we're out of here the better. You know how it is. And we've got a long way ahead of us."

I did indeed know, just as I knew not to pry for more details. The fewer people who knew of any individual piece of our collective puzzle, the better. That was a lesson drilled in the Circle just as sure as in the Underground, as different as they were. So I nodded off an acknowledgement and a short farewell, and they were gone with another free mage just as quickly as they'd arrived.

Sometimes it seemed like all these encounters could be just the fanciful product of a fevered mind, so little impression did they leave on the fabric of the world. Nobody to witness, nobody to speak, nobody to listen. They were shadows skirting the edges of a brilliant sun, all the lives and interactions and stories of mages throughout the continent. We could be sequestered away and ignored until the whims and fancies of a king or nobleman required us as accessories to _their_ stories, or we could motion through other people's lives pretending they were our own._ Like you're going about all your daily business in town_, Hawke had described it once, _but your mind stays back inside the wardrobe or standing before the mirror, checking your presentation to make sure nothing's slipped up and revealed the truth_.

I'd been jealous of his freedom when we first met, and I doubted that would ever go away. But we'd had enough conversations since then, many of them while he was _supposed_ to be at his new mansion entertaining nobles with his mother, for that freedom to slide off the pedestal I'd tied it to, all the times I glanced out the Tower windows at the expanses of lake and countryside just out of reach. In or out of the Circle, there was no such thing as a free mage.

Heavy grey clouds were building in the distance, and a breeze tugged at my coat and the bristles of hair against the back of my neck. I should get back to the city, check my stock of supplies and open the clinic for a few hours, work on the section I was writing about the much-ignored role mages played in Andraste's war against the Imperium… All things I needed to finish before tonight's meeting with the Underground. No matter which way I went, though, it would be slow going, if only to make sure I didn't stumble into a den of raiders by accident. The route along the coast at least had the benefit of fresh air, and thankfully few questionable plants or gigantic spider webs.

A flash of black and red caught my eye after a time walking uninterrupted, and I turned, hand falling to the grip of my staff. There was no threat in the area though, just a lone, familiar figure sitting in the sand in the passage below me, facing out to the ocean. I walked round the jut of rock, boots sliding enough on the sloping path that I made sure to go carefully.

"Hawke."

His eyebrows jumped in surprise when he saw me. "Funny seeing you here. Somehow I'd gotten the impression I was the only one mad enough to wander about the coast without a full escort of rugged, hardy mercenaries."

He made me smile. I couldn't help it. "Well considering the mercenaries are normally the ones that try to attack you and steal your coinpurse, I think it's better if I go without. Am I intruding upon anything?"

"What? No." He cocked his head, a friendly gesture if it didn't look quite so forced. "I'm just busy brooding. Varric was going on about how he needed material for a good brooding scene for whatever it is he's writing about me these days, so I thought I'd come up here and oblige him. Mansions aren't exactly the choicest setting for that whole sort of thing, I learned recently. Not unless they're all dilapidated and full of corpses, and _well_. You know how Mother _hates_ dealing with guests who're dead on their feet."

I chuckled and moved to sit beside him, setting my staff to the side and then leaning back against my elbows. Hawke remained fully upright, if slightly hunched over, giving me a good view of the back of his head but little and less of his expression. The wind seemed to catch his hair, causing little tufts to stand straight up, and I burrowed my fingers in the sand to keep them from reaching up and smoothing it back down.

The only sounds for a time were the spray of water against the cliffs below us and the calls of a bird or two in the distance. There was a time when I'd thought silence peaceful, but I'd since become too accustomed to chattering voices and clacking footfalls all around me, and a few months with the Wardens wasn't enough to get me out of the habit of finding a lack of other voices and people-noises disconcerting at best. "Hmmm," I murmured, tracing patterns in the sand with a finger.

Hawke turned and caught my eye, questioning.

"It's nothing," I replied, giving something resembling a shrug. Neither of us spoke for a little while longer.

"Hawke… I'm sorry, about yesterday."

He turned again, but this time his gaze was on the ground. "You don't have to be." His voice was flat. "It's not your responsibility to fix my problems."

"Perhaps it's not my responsibility, but that doesn't mean I don't want to help. I'm a healer. I fix people."

"I'm not broken."

_We're all broken_. "No. It's the world that's broken. It's the system that needs to change." I could feel the edge in my voice as much as hear it. "One day, that change will come, and we'll all be free. _Truly_ free, with the same rights and opportunities as any man. We won't be… marked, just for our magic."

"I want to be a part of making that happen, too," Hawke murmured.

I sat up fully and gazed out across the Waking Sea, far out to where the grey of the waters met the grey of the sky at the horizon and mingled until you could barely tell the beginning of one from the end of the other. "Then you should. Maybe I don't know how, exactly, but we can think of something, I'm sure. Perhaps you could be a voice for change among the nobility."

He seemed to chew his lip a bit, brow wrinkling with worry or deep thoughtfulness. "Nothing good ever came from hiding in safety, I suppose," he said after a moment. "I just wish I didn't have to hide at all."

"You don't have to hide here, at least," I told him. "And our actions will make it so mages in the future never need to say that. I try to think that can be enough."

Our eyes met, and I liked to think I could see some comfort taken from my words in his. They were half-lidded, but I could still see the flecks of gold. He had a long nose, and my gaze travelled the length of it down to the root of a reluctant smile at the corners of his lips. I might have kissed him then, if this were some other world, some other Anders not saddled with a spirit passenger and a hundred other burdens. But those possibilities had been snuffed out before they could even begin to burn, and space between us remained.

"Perhaps it can be enough," he replied, half a question itself. "For now."


	4. Resistance

_Author's note: Well, that certainly took long enough! I blame starting the school year. And, y'know, writer's block and laziness. Ah well. Thanks to everyone who's read and alerted and favourited!_

* * *

><p><strong>9:32 Dragon - Hightown<br>**

"For the last time, serah, the Viscount is a busy man. I cannot allow you to barge in on him while he's attending to _important_ matters solely because you want to bother him with complaints about insignificant pieces of legislation."

Hawke nearly had to bite his tongue to keep from shouting. "It's hardly _insignificant_," he said hotly. "How many families in Kirkwall are discovered to have mage children each year? Hundreds? This new law puts the fates of thousands of people at the discretion of an order of thugs who are well-known to abuse those they have power over, regularly, and are held accountable for their actions rarely if ever."

The seneschal sighed and put a hand to his forehead. "I have no desire to get into another mage debate this year, with you or anybody else, serah. The templars I tolerate because I must, but as it stands, you are simply a very lucky refugee, Amell mansion or no, and you are hardly so politically essential. Please leave before I'm forced to call over one of the guards."

It was enough to make him want to punch the arrogant bastard right in the face. Not the comments about his class, or lack thereof; the only way Hawke could care less about what Kirkwall's nobility thought of him would be if having money and connections suddenly stopped keeping him away from the templars' scrutinous eyes. It was the apathy. The attitude that if you were tired of thinking about the oppression of a certain group, you could just decide to stop talking about it and all consideration of the topic would float clean away from your mind, until the next time you _deigned_ to consider it again. Nobody ever _made_ you consider it, of course; no person or circumstance would beat you over the head 'til you had metaphorical mage-shaped bruises all over your body with no healer in sight. It was just a hobby to pick up if you felt you had the time and curiosity, and everybody else should just be grateful that you picked it up at all. What a fabulous luxury.

"You do realise I'm _friends_ with the Captain, right?" Hawke retorted. It was better than repeating his true thoughts. "Aveline's not just going to let her men drag me out of here like a criminal." Or at least, he hoped she wouldn't.

"Spare me the posturing," Bran said with a raised eyebrow and a healthy dose of hypocrisy.

"I'll spare the posturing when the Viscount can spare a few minutes to see me," Hawke cut in. He folded his arms over his chest, scowling. Maker, what use were money and power when they didn't even let you do anything useful for actual _people_?

Apparently no use, because the seneschal still wasn't budging. "Well then perhaps you should go back home and posture there where nobody is around to be bothered by it until those spare minutes turn up, because it will be quite a long time. Now leave."

Hawke had barely turned his back to the seneschal, giving him the dirtiest glare he could manage for a parting gift, when he heard the click of a door opening behind him. "Oh, Bran, you are available, that's good. Would you mind coming to verify this one report for me?" said a voice, accompanied by a few footfalls against the floor of the Keep. A voice that sounded familiar.

Seizing opportunities was probably one of those actions that, in most cases, could be said to accurately describe Tamzen Hawke. It certainly did now, at least. He spun around and was rewarded with a view of the Viscount's shiny bald head. And the rest of his person, but it was the head that really stood out.

"Viscount Dumar!" he called out, far cheerier than his mood would have suggested. "Long time no see, isn't it? Say, I'm sure you're exceedingly bored by whatever administrative sort of thing you're working on at the moment, right? You can spare a minute or two to have a chat with me, of course you can!"

The Viscount's somewhat disconcerted gaze slid over to Hawke, followed by an irritated glance from the seneschal, who was probably thinking something like _Oh dear Maker, did he really have to open the door at that exact time_? "Excuse me, you look familiar but I don't quite recall your name at the moment," the Viscount replied, sounding rather weary. "And I am quite busy, as I'm sure Seneschal Bran has told you, so I'm afraid I cannot spare time for a 'chat', as you say."

He was _not_ about to let this opportunity slip away from him now. "I'm Hawke," he said, moving closer to stand right in front of Dumar. Bran maneouvred almost gracelessly out of his way and contorted his face into an even more irritated look. "I brought your son home safe from that whole mess with the qunari and the stab-happy mercenaries, remember?"

"Oh. Yes, of course. Serah Hawke, you said? Was there something I could do for you?" He sounded distracted, and tired. Hawke felt a flash of pity for him, but the safety of mages and their families in Kirkwall was more important that one man's emotional state. Particularly if that one man had volunteered for his current position. He paid the momentary feeling no mind.

"Yes, actually," he said, all seriousness now. "I'm here about the law you passed recently that increases the potential maximum sentence for aiding and abetting apostates to life in prison, and allows the use of lethal force on those who resist a mage's arrest. I want it repealed."

The Viscount's face flashed briefly into an expression of resigned frustration and helplessness. "Will nobody in this city ever rest on their laurels for a moment? First it's templars in here, badgering me about allowing them more leeway in doing their job, and now I'm going to have you and probably countless other mage sympathisers snapping at my heels. I don't even know why I bother trying to please everyone."

"Neither do I," Hawke quipped. "How about you just try pleasing me? I'm really very good at being pleased."

"Good at being a rabble-rouser, more like," the Viscount nearly snapped. "First the qunari; now the mages. Is there any maligned group you haven't championed yet? Will you come back advocating for the elves next week?"

He shrugged. "I try. Really though, this law will do nothing but stir up hatred. Most of these people who're supposedly 'harbouring apostates' are just parents and siblings who didn't want to toss their children to the wolves the moment they found out they had magic. You can't let the templars put them in prison for the rest of their lives! And this part about letting the templars kill people for resisting arrest - do you really think that won't be abused? That you won't have people murdered in the street just for daring to stand up for themselves and their loved ones rather than stick their arms out for manacles and let themselves be spit on and kicked?"

"Serah Hakwe," the Viscount pleaded, "I have neither the time nor the patience to discuss this with you. The law will stand. The Knight-Commander will hardly allow this office to be jerked about by mage sympathisers like a puppet on strings, and your arguments are grossly exaggerated. The templars are a force for law and order in this city, not a corrupt band of roving marauders."

"Because of course the two are mutually exclusive," Hawke shot back. His anger was bubbling in the pit of his belly. How could everybody be so _blind_? "Do you remember the last Captain of the Guard?"

"Of course I do," he said. His brows and mouth had turned down into a glare, and his voice had grown a touch of steel. "That scandal was an absolute nightmare for this office, not least in that it allowed Knight Commander Meredith to come here grasping for more power under the excuse that the guard couldn't be trusted to handle their own affairs." He turned away from Hawke, looking out over the railing to the floor of the Keep and the windows to Hightown below. "But who's to say she's even entirely wrong? The templars have certainly seemed more adept at managing any potential criminality on the part of their order's members than the guard has."

Hawke could have choked at that last sentence. "If by 'managing' you mean 'not letting victims' claims reach the courts or the public', then yes, that sounds exactly like the templars." His voice dripped with the contempt that had welled up inside him. "They have free reign to do whatever they like to a captive population, and you really think they don't use that opportunity?"

He would not mention the stories Anders had told him. He would not mention Karl. He had no choice, not if he wanted to avoid throwing suspicion on himself. Even though the weakness of his argument made him cringe. Empty rhetoric was fine for preaching to those who already believed in you, but here he had to convince an opponent. He could already see the outcome of the conversation.

The Viscount had had enough. "Whatever indiscretions you think the templars get away with, the fact of the matter remains that we have had guardsmen as well as templars injured and killed in the street by private citizens looking to hide illegal mages. _Adult_ mages, mind you – these were part of that band of apostates that escaped from Starkhaven last year, not some Lowtown families' four-year-old children. The Knight-Commander insisted on more freedom in dealing with such reprobates, and after incidents like that I quite agree that it is necessary. And that is the end of the matter."

The door was practically slammed, the seneschal gave a smug "Good day, serah," and Hawke was left standing by himself, fuming.

Even with his mother's name and mansion and all his gold from the Deep Roads, he was powerless when it actually mattered. He could practically hear the snide comment from Carver, though it had been close to a year and a half since they'd spoken, or seen each other at all. _Oh, so someone finally sees through all your bullshit, brother. Not so funny on that end now, is it?_

Well bugger them all. If he couldn't personally convince the Viscount to change the law, he'd keep coming back until he could. And if he had any luck… well, he was fairly certain luck was one of the things he did have, along with certain other resources. If things went the way he hoped they might, he would make sure the people who broke this particular law were never caught. After all – he'd belonged to a rich family for just over a year, but he'd been part of an _apostate_ family his entire life.

* * *

><p>When he stopped to think about it, Anders found he was really rather unsure about how all this had come to happen. He'd insisted – to himself, to Hawke – for over a year that he wouldn't allow the other mage to get involved in his… less than scrupulous activities. And yet, here they both were, standing in a crumbling abandoned barracks building surrounded by mage children and their frightened parents, very definitely doing something that would get them into serious trouble if they were discovered.<p>

But doing something desperately needed.

Hawke had crouched low to the floor, on eye-level with the children who crowded round him, some eager, some hanging back and clutching at their mothers' skirts out of fear or shyness. "The templars want to take you away from all the good things you have here. Your mothers and fathers, your siblings, your friends. Maybe some of those people want you to go away with them. They think you're dangerous, and so they're scared. But look." He held out his palm, and a dancing blue flame sprouted from the centre. "I'm just like you. Are you scared of me?" A chorus of shaking heads. "Then you shouldn't be scared of yourselves, either. You have special powers, and they make you vulnerable, but that doesn't make you any less deserving of whatever life you want to live. And I can help teach you to control your powers, so you can do just that."

It had been - what? Nearly two weeks ago, now, when Anders had first broached the topic with him. It had been over drinks (if you could call them that) at the Hanged Man, after several nights of excuses for his absence on Anders' part and cajoling on Hawke's, Varric's, and Isabela's. The latter two had leaned close together in some sort of mischievous conspiracy, looking over something Varric had written, when Hawke had turned to him and fixed him with a stare.

"Everything alright?" he'd said, a hint of solemnity and concern beneath an otherwise conversational tone. "You've been fidgeting since you got here."

Anders had looked away, and down at the ground, and anywhere but back at Hawke. "I… There's a new law, or there will be, at least. The Viscount hasn't signed it yet, but there's no reason to think he won't. He's like clay in Meredith's hands. It would allow people found to have helped escaped mages to be imprisoned for the rest of their lives - possibly even murdered without trial."

It had set him pacing in circles in his clinic when he'd heard. The abuses the templars visited on mage sympathisers were bad enough already, when there was only internal pressure and individuals' sadism to account for it; how much worse would it get when even the slightest hint of anything but perfect compliance could be used as justification for murder, and with the law's blessing? The news had stirred the Underground like a storm over the Waking Sea at their next meeting - the nature of Anders' colleagues' routine activities were such that additional punishments would make little difference to them unless they were accompanied by additional patrols and a higher likelihood of being caught, but what of the people they only had marginal contact with? The families of children just come into their power who cared enough to prefer the risks of freedom to a life locked in the Gallows; the inkeeps willing to turn a blind eye to the occasional secretive boarder in suspiciously robe-like clothing? They were the ones with the most to lose, and even though the back of his mind hissed at the masses privileged enough to keep their comfortable lives while others lived and died like scared rats, Anders knew he couldn't ask them to make the same sacrifices he had.

Sure enough, the Viscount had signed the bill into law shortly after, and the Underground had come no closer to a solution. It had preyed on his mind like a parasite, hovering over his head and taunting him with his lack of agency. Working his clinic until he was near dead on his feet did nothing helpful, instead only leaving him exhausted as well as miserable, so when a trip up to the bazaar found him ambushed by friends who wanted his company while they got drunk, he finally gave in on the off-chance that cards and companionship might capture his mind the way working hadn't.

The hope had been a vain one. Anders had proved for rather mediocre company; no doubt why Varric and Isabela had functionally sectioned themselves off to snicker over absurd stories. But Hawke, at least, had not disappointed, reacting to his news with the appropriate expressions of horrified disbelief and stony outrage. It wasn't a _solution_, not even close, but their shared experience did something to calm his tunnel-vision anxiety that the frustrated wrath of his Underground friends couldn't match.

So when a women he'd seen a few times at his clinic pulled him into an abandoned passage on his way home one afternoon and tearfully confided that her daughter - a shy, stubborn little thing with big bright eyes - had shown signs of magic, it seemed only natural to relate the story to Hawke. She was an example of just what they'd spoken about, for certain, but even beyond that, there was something uncomfortably sobering in the realisation that, more than Chantry dogma about evil Magisters, or Tranquil shop owners in the Gallows courtyard, he was the face of mages to an not-inconsiderate portion of Kirkwall. People scared of having family taken by the Templars would come to him, because they knew nowhere else to turn to. And despite his connections, more often than not he had little and less of an idea how to help.

Anders wasn't sure whether it had been himself or Hawke or both of them together who'd come up with the idea. Most parents, even if they wanted their children to live free, were reluctant to send their babies off into a foreign town with strange activists who slid out of the shadows when they got word of mages; without knowledge of the inner workings of the Circles, they would doubt such a fate would be much better than contacting the templars. What they wanted was what the Dalish woman, Arianni, had wanted - to keep their children with them, magic and all. But their problem was the age-old one: how to conceal a magical child in a city crawling with the armed and righteous? Anders didn't have delusions enough to think he was any sort of expert in such matters, given how he was shielded by loyal Undercity-dwellers, Varric's and Hawke's (oft-denied) string-pulling, and Maker knew what else, and the precious few Underground mages who'd remained in Kirkwall proper had all been Circle-educated for at least a time, and had thankfully more self-control than a band of frightened children with ages still in the single digits.

But Hawke, though. Hawke was an apostate, trained by an apostate father. He knew how to hide in plain sight better than anyone Anders had known. And so Anders went back and spoke to the woman, and words went out through other hushed channels.

The results of those efforts had gathered here.

"First thing's first, and I'm sure you could all guess this on your own, but stay away from templars and Chantry folk," Hawke said. "Anyone who seems… overzealous. Don't go screaming and running in the other direction if you see one, mind you. Go about your business, don't look too interesting. If one of them comes up to you specifically, act the same as you always have. If they're looking for something, it's something out of the ordinary."

He paused a moment, eyes flickering down to the ground for a moment. He seemed to swallow, heavily, though Anders wasn't sure the rest of the crowd would have noticed. Or at least, they wouldn't have noticed the significance.

"Don't rock the boat," he continued. Was that a quiver in his voice? "Be moderate. Even if the people around you say things or do things that are horrible, you make yourself a target if you speak out against them. It casts suspicion on you, and the people around you. 'Why do they care so much about mages?' is what others will ask themselves. If I'm going to be honest, I can't in good faith tell you not to stand up for us, but know what it means. Know how unsafe it is, and just what you're jeopardising."

It was sound advice. _Advice he should take himself_, Anders thought, not for the first time. He had family and friends and money and status, and to think of him losing all the things any mage could ever wish for… it was just stupid. Stupid, and wonderful, and foolhardy, and perfect. He wanted to lock him away and fight off anyone who tried to hurt him, even as he wanted him right there at his side taking on the templars of every Chantry in Thedas. Hawke would do it, too. It thrilled and scared him.

"Anders."

Hawke and all the others were looking at him expectantly. Such looks might have started him running his mouth about idiotic rubbish, once upon a time. _Nope, nobody responsible here; look somewhere else for reliable and _boring_, because I'm not sticking around long enough to see your expectations get crushed to teeny little bits._ Now they barely fazed him, the currency if you will that bought him his freedom and his livelihood. And all that they wanted from him were cured illnesses and mended lacerations. Easy things, though he would have gotten strange looks for suggesting so. He wasn't sure where to place these particular looks.

"We need you to demonstrate controlling techniques," Hawke prompted him, and Anders nodded. Of course. He ambled over to Hawke and the clustered children and the parents farther back, and when he crouched low, pulling tendrils of mana from deep within himself until his fingers began to glow a faint blue.

He wasn't quite sure whose fault it was that the side of his arm ended up pressed against Hawke's, nor whose fault it was that moments later they ended up separate again.

* * *

><p>"You just <em>had<em> to impress them all with that lightening storm, didn't you?" Anders hissed, jostling through the tight-packed crowd several paces behind Hawke. His breathing came in short, heavy puffs. The various sorts of violent mayhem that tended to erupt around a certain other mage had kept him decently active these past few years, but in his experience, it was _running_ for one's life rather than _fighting_ for it that tended to evoke the worst floods of panic. When Hawke looked back at him, Anders could see the sharp rise and fall of his chest as well, though for some incomprehensible reason, the man was also grinning at him.

"They were all doing so well!" Hawke said, nearly spinning in a full circle as he pulled Anders from the crowded hex into a tight side-alley. He was practically _beaming_. "I thought they deserved a treat!"

Anders stalked ahead of him and glanced over his shoulder. "You should have saved it for next time. I told you I recognised that man. You know what would have happened if we hadn't started posting sentries."

"Free scrap metal and new mystery meat for the stew at the Hanged Man?"

It took barely a moment before Anders made a noise and a face. "That's _disgusting_," he protested. Dreaming up violent and creative deaths for the particularly deserving was an amusing pastime, no doubt, but there were just some lengths that went a little too far past common standards of decency. Few, but still some.

Peeking through the rusty iron fence bars of what looked like an overgrown courtyard, Anders saw nobody nearby and decided it was worth the chance. He indicated the hiding spot with a tilt of his head, and Hawke promptly cleared the protruding spikes with a running vault and in all likelihood a touch of force magic. He frowned and rolled his eyes, but climbed after him nonetheless.

"You're probably right," Hawke replied, when Anders joined him on the other side of the fence. "Who knows how much lyrium could've accumulated in the muscle tissue? And what if everybody started being all pious and authoritarian afterward? After all you are what you ea- "

"Please stop elaborating," Anders said, cutting off the other mage's frequent mouth-running. That was _really_ not a mental image he needed, ever. "And don't think I didn't notice that spell."

He just shrugged and proceeded onward. The lack of alarmed shouts or telltale feel of a mana-dampening ward being placed in the vicinity allowed Anders to feel secure enough to slow his pace to a normal walk rather than their previous half-running gait, and not soon after, they stopped in the narrow, dusty space between two houses. Anders stayed on his feet, peering out at the hex they'd come from every few seconds; Hawke slid down low into a crouching position, leaning back against the smog-blackened wall and probably getting all manner of filth in his coal-dark hair.

He eyed him when his attention wasn't focused on checking their surroundings for templars. "I hope you're ready to run again if they come down this way," he said. "I'd feel better if you were standing."

Hawke cracked open one eye to stare back, a smirk playing on his lips. Sometimes, Anders though ruefully, the man really needed to learn to act his age. "Don't worry," he replied. "I'm always ready. _We do _do an awful lot of running, don't we? Sometimes it's nice to just get down on my knees and enjoy the sights."

Anders turned back to watch the path so fast as to destroy any attempt at subtlety, if indeed one could even be made. He hadn't ever really blushed _often_, but Maker was it obvious when he did. Like when _someone_ dragged up the image that had wrapped itself around his mind two nights ago and kept him awake until an ungodly hour, then left his gaze fixed on Hawke's mouth whenever the other mage wasn't looking.

They were both silent for the next few minutes. Anders refused to look back at Hawke, and so, absent the usual babbling, he had no idea what exactly he was doing. He supposed without the usual babbling, it didn't matter especially much. Not unless he decided to start conjuring lightning again, which he was decently sure wouldn't happen. But it soon felt like enough time had passed without the appearance of pursuing templars, so Anders flashed Hawke as brief a "let's go" expression as possible, and they slid back out into the throng of people on the nearest main street. It'd be best to head over to the Hanged Man, he thought - closer than either his clinic or Hawke's mansion, as well as less likely to cause trouble if anybody did still manage to follow them. And if he was lucky, Hawke would direct his inappropriate flirting toward Varric or Isabela instead.

When he finally glanced at the other mage again, he wore one of his rare pensive looks. "We'll need to pick out a new location for the lessons," Hawke murmured.

"If any of them still want to come," Anders replied. "They might decide a pair of grown apostates is more dangerous company than they're willing to endure."

"Doesn't mean we stop trying."

It was stupid, but Anders' heart swelled a little. Even though he'd made up his mind to be at least mildly cross with Hawke for an indefinite period of time. His actions had been more reckless than usual of late, but who was Anders to judge? Nobody. Not with Justice. His cause had become Hawke's cause, and Anders wasn't mad enough to hold any pretenses about who would be a more useful public face for mages in Kirkwall. Throughout all of Thedas, even. It was times like these that made him wonder why he held himself back. Though it was also times like this that gave him the answers.


End file.
